I’m playing a little fast and loose with the letter X (as I am sure many people do). My post today is about my favorite person with the XX chromosome — my daughter ❤

Her birthday is actually tomorrow, so tonight feels like a nice time to write a short tribute to her! I tell people that I did not love my daughter right away. When she was born, she just felt like a baby. She was a cute baby and I cared about her because she was a baby, but that’s all she seemed to be — a baby. It wasn’t until the day after she was born when I happened to be standing outside the nursery and I could see her in the back with a nurse. She was born a little jaundiced so they had to do blood tests to check her bilirubin level, and they did that with a heel stick (I soon learned it was a lot more like a heel slice). I saw the nurse do the heel stick and could see through the glass that my baby was crying — and that was the exact moment motherhood kicked in. I felt a physical change happen in me. Fear, anger, and love grabbed my heart and I turned to my husband and said in a panicked voice, “She’s hurting my baby! She’s hurting my baby! Get me back to my room and bring me my baby!” And he hurried me as quickly as my C-section would let me go back to my room and told the nurse to bring our baby in the room. When she got there, I grabbed her and calmed her down and checked every inch of her body to make sure she was okay (that’s when I discovered a heel stick is more like slicing open part of her heel to get the blood). And I made a vow to her right then and there while she was in my arms that I would never, ever let anyone hurt her again.

She was the sweetest, best behaved baby!

Of course, life happens and sure, she got hurt plenty of times — physically and emotionally. But my love for her grows every day. Just when I think I can’t possibly love my daughter any more than I already do, a new day dawns and I love her more.

My daughter’s best quality is empathy. She is one of the most empathetic people I know. I discovered this early on about her. When she was probably 4 years old or so, the 3 of us were driving home from shopping one night. It was a dark, chilly, rainy fall night — simply miserable. At one point, I could hear her sniffling in the back seat. I turned around to look at her and could see she had tears on her cheeks. I said, worried, “Becky? Are you crying? What’s wrong?” She sobbed, “Did you see that man back there walking along the road all alone in the cold and the dark and the rain? He makes me so sad!” I had a vague recollection of seeing someone walking along the road, but for some reason, this image hit my daughter square in the heart. And she has been this way ever since.

When she was little, I offered her some honey on her toast. She told me she didn’t like honey because “Tiggers do not like honey.” She won;t eat honey to this day.

I think that is part of the reason she works at the job she does. She is a campaign fundraiser for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She’s a great event planner and fundraiser, it turns out, but what drives her is doing work that matters in this world, making a difference in people’s lives, doing whatever she can to end the suffering of people who have cancer and the pain of those who love people who have cancer. She feels it when someone she knows through her office is lost, and she feels it when someone makes progress. Knowing her work literally can save lives fulfills her. I absolutely could not be more proud of my child. She is an amazing human being, and I have no idea how that happened. I know her parents 🙂 They are flawed humans with all sorts of faults who made so many mistakes while she was growing up; we aren’t worthy of her. Yet she turned out to be a kind, hard-working, sweet adult who loves her parents despite their flaws, faults, and mistakes.